Setting New Window and New Tab behavior in Safari

While testing a new machine setup today, I noticed that Safari wasn’t opening to the default homepage like it should. Instead, it was opening Safari’s Top Sites.

There wasn’t an obvious way to set the Safari new window setting from the command line, but with the assistance of Greg Neagle, I’ve mapped out the applicable keys and their settings. See below the jump for the details.

The behavior of new Safari windows is set by the NewWindowBehavior key in /Users/username/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari.plist. Likewise, new Safari tabs are set by the NewTabBehavior key in /Users/username/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari.plist.

Both keys use an integer to set the desired behavior. Here’s how it maps out:

com.apple.Safari NewWindowBehavior

com.apple.Safari NewWindowBehavior 0 = Homepage

com.apple.Safari NewWindowBehavior 1 = Empty Page

com.apple.Safari NewWindowBehavior 2 = Same Page

com.apple.Safari NewWindowBehavior 3 = Bookmarks

com.apple.Safari NewWindowBehavior 4 = Top Sites

com.apple.Safari NewTabBehavior

com.apple.Safari NewTabBehavior 0 = Homepage

com.apple.Safari NewTabBehavior 1 = Empty Page

com.apple.Safari NewTabBehavior 2 = Same Page

com.apple.Safari NewTabBehavior 3 = Bookmarks

com.apple.Safari NewTabBehavior 4 = Top Sites

Here’s the defaults commands to set the NewWindowBehavior and NewTabBehavior keys to the various available settings:

Set new Safari windows to open to Safari’s default homepage:

defaults write com.apple.Safari NewWindowBehavior -int 0

Set new Safari windows to open to an empty page:

defaults write com.apple.Safari NewWindowBehavior -int 1

Set new Safari windows to open to the same site as the last-opened page: